
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 15, 1995                   TAG: 9501170064
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WE MOVE MERCHANDISE FOR THE MASSES

THE woman in Maine who buys L'eggs pantyhose, the angler in Montana who casts an Orvis fly, the sun worshiper in the Florida Keys who dons a pair of Bausch & Lomb sunglasses all share a Roanoke connection.

Their products weren't made here.

But they were shipped through here.

Roanoke got its start as a transportation town, back in the 1880s, when railroads opened the Appalachian coalfields and this was a primary staging ground for trains that moved coal east toward the ports.

Now, the Roanoke Valley is being transformed into a distribution center of another sort - for manufacturers who warehouse their goods here so they can be trucked or flown quickly to customers.

Distribution may not have the glamor of high-tech. But where Western Virginia aspires to be a high-tech capital, it already is a distribution center. In the Roanoke Valley, at least 6,000 people find their jobs directly connected to the business of warehousing and shipping.

Among the big names are the well-known mail-order companies that have taken root here in the past decade, such as Orvis, Hanover Direct and Home Shopping Network.

But the distribution industry also includes manufacturers, from Couvrette Building Systems, which makes automated teller machines and ships them across the country, to Elizabeth Arden, which makes cosmetics and ships them worldwide.

And the valley's distribution magnet occasionally attracts headquarters, such as Foot Levelers Inc., which makes chiropractic care products and moved from Iowa to Roanoke in the late 1980s because its president determined that "Roanoke is an incredibly good spot to ship a package out of."

What makes Roanoke so good? A key north-south interstate highway and a central location on the East Coast help. So do an impressive and growing network of air cargo jets and trucking companies that are feeding off the concentration of distribution companies.

But distribution also inspires some grumbling - and disagreement - among business leaders: Are distribution jobs, often heavy on part-time work, really good jobs? And should the region try to attract more of them, or emphasize other sectors of the economy?

For a report on this debate, see today's Horizon section.

by CNB